Month: April 2010

If you didn’t think the GOP gubernatorial primary campaign was heating up as Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner tune up for their final televised debate on Sunday, you will after watching this ad, which is running statewide (at a $2 million per week burn rate):

Some political observers say GOP underdog Poizner’s ad risks offending some Republicans, who might not agree with attacking capitalist titans. That it’s an issue that plays well with Democrats but not so with Republicans.

Others say it reminds Republicans that his GOP rival Whitman will be carrying some heavy baggage into the general election if she wins the primary. Others of the Tea Party variety are said to be just as turned off by the greed and avarice that Goldman Sachs represents, and could turn against Whitman in the primary in the same way independents and Democrats would in a general election.

Less slick but as effective is this nearly two-minute long video produced by a newly emboldened Poizner team:

It’s running on YouTube, and has only had 405 views, so the obvious impact will be made with the TV ad. In either case, Whitman is reeling from a crushing week, hounded daily by stories about her ties to Goldman Sachs.

She’s tried to frame it as old news, saying the stock “spinning,” in which she gained nearly $2 million in quick turnaround profits but had to return after eBay shareholders sued her, took place 10 years ago. But she has untold millions from her personal wealth currently tied up in investments with Goldman Sachs, and the imagery of her sitting there with a handful of board members on the compensation committee handing out multi-million dollar bonuses to Goldman Sachs’ corporate execs is freshly relevant as the public’s anger over such perks continues to seethe.

The Poizner team is hitting her hard on her support of the highly unpopular (among Republicans and Democrats alike) bank bailout during the 2008 presidential campaign, accusing her of looking out for her own interests. If the firm had been allowed to fail a la the Lehman Brothers, she would have lost a fortune, said Jarrod Agen, spokesman for Poizner.

“She was a vocal voice in favor of the bank bailout,” Agen said. “That she was tied to one of the companies that was bailed out is not a positive message for Republican primary voters. She took an active role in a bailout of a company where she would have taken a huge financial loss if Goldman Sachs went under.”

Poizner’s campaign knows the race is tightening, Agen said, by the pushback ads Whitman is running. This is titled “Cliff,” which takes Poizner’s own ad imagery and plays it against him:

Still, Poizner’s team says it’s feeling a shift in momentum.

“The strategy we’ve been talking about for months is working,” Agen said. “And we’re getting the added benefit of Goldman Sachs as a significant issue. The Goldman Sachs controversy calls into question the personal strength Whitman had, her business sense. The fact she was on the board of a company entwined in scandal does not look good.”

Bounds dismisses talk of momentum shifts and Goldman Sachs negatives.

“At the end of the day, voters realize that Meg’s business experience is a California success story of growing eBay from 30 employees to 15,000 in building a cornerstone employer in Northern California. The fact that she was on (Goldman Sachs’) board for 15 months nearly 10 years ago, that that’s the most salacious TV ad they could put together — voters are too smart. They’ll see through this.”

The disastrous oil spill still in progress in the Gulf of Mexico has further fueled the already-hot debate over drilling off California’s coast, with some significant disagreements on what lessons we should take.

Attorney General candidate and Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, hosted a field hearing of his Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee today in Hermosa Beach to talk about public health and environmental threats posed by oil drilling. Testimony was given by representatives from regulators, the oil industry, environmental and community groups and local governments.

“Today’s hearing further highlights the need for the State of California to provide enhanced protections for the public from the dangers posed by oil drilling in California,” Nava said in a news release. “Many parts of the state are impacted by oil development and drilling. Whether it is Hermosa Beach and Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles County or Santa Barbara (the proposed location of the first new drilling in California Sanctuary Act waters in 41 years), it is imperative that the public is protected. We must make sure that we do not expose Californians to the type of catastrophe that is currently occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Nava said information today will be used to improve state regulations and close gaps in the existing permitting process, and will be the basis for protecting the California environment and public from abusive oil industry practices.

Meanwhile, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina today said on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” that while she might not be of Sarah Palin’s “drill, baby, drill” ilk, “what I would say is I believe that the United States of America needs to take advantage of every source of domestic energy we have. We ought to take advantage of oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and, yes, sun and wind and all the rest of it. But if we are serious about growing our economy and lessening our dependence on foreign oil, then offshore drilling has to be part of that equation.

“And I would hope that people wouldn’t use this tragedy — it’s both an economic tragedy and an environmental tragedy — to politicize the notion and say, ‘See, see, it can’t be done safely.’ The truth is it is being done safely in many places,” Fiorina said.

She called the gulf spill “a very troublesome situation. And while I support offshore drilling if it can be done in an environmentally safe way — and most of the time it is — certainly technology has come a long way. An accident like this shakes people to the core, no question. I believe it should be up to the voters of each state. Interestingly, in the last five years, the voters of California have come to favor, by a majority, offshore drilling.”

The Administrative Office of the U.S Courts reported today that 2,376 federal and state applications for orders authorizing the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications – what you and I would call wiretaps – were filed in 2009.

Breaking it down further, wiretap applications in California, New York and New Jersey accounted for 71 percent of all applications approved by state judges; 24 states had wiretap requests in 2009, up from 22 in 2008, but requests were also made in the District Columbia and Virgin Islands.

The state wiretap with the most intercepts was conducted in New York County, New York, where a 543-day wiretap in a corruption investigation resulted in the interception of 11,000 incriminating messages. The average length of an original authorization was 29 days.

The most frequently noted location in wiretap locations was “portable device,” a category that includes cellular telephones and digital pagers, and 86 percent of all applications for intercepts cited illegal drugs as the most serious offense under investigation.

As of Dec. 31, a total of 4,537 persons had been arrested and 678 persons had been convicted as a result of interceptions reported as terminated.

Until now, most Form 700s forms were available only over the counter. Initially, the FPPC will provide the forms for state constitutional officials, state legislators and county board of supervisors. It will eventually post all Form 700s.

Here are the details from the FPPC:

The Fair Political Practices Commission, the state’s campaign finance watchdog, today began posting on its website the Statement of Economic Interests (SEI or Form 700) of California’s elected officials. Initially, the SEIs of Constitutional officers, Insurance Commissioner, legislators and County Supervisors will be available, with the ultimate goal of including all elected officials within the state that file their SEI with the Commission.

“This is an ongoing effort of the Commission to assure that public information is actually available to the entire public,” said FPPC Chairman Ross Johnson. “It does no good for someone in San Diego to have to come to Sacramento to get a Form 700 of their legislative representative.”

Statements of Economic Interests are an important means for the official that files them, the media, and the public to help gauge where potential conflicts of interest may exist. The state mandated forms include information about the sources of an official’s income, investments, business positions, real property holdings and gifts. Merely reporting an economic interest is not a conflict in itself; a conflict arises when an official governmental decision, made by the official, impacts their economic interests.

One of the key themes of the Political Reform Act of 1974, is that documents such as SEIs and campaign statements are filed at the most decentralized level. This made sense at a time when it was easier to walk down to the City Clerk’s office, but with the Internet, there is greater access to these documents if they are maintained on a single website.

Due to privacy concerns and out of an abundance of caution, the SEIs posted on the Commission’s website will have the address, telephone and signature blocks redacted. The forms may be viewed at www.fppc.ca.gov.